Showing posts with label may. Show all posts
Showing posts with label may. Show all posts

Institutionalised Cruelty as a policy platform - a brief history.

Me too.  UK Government "crackdown on benefits fraud" my arse..



Institutionalised Cruelty as a policy platform has a history...... read all about it.


BENEFITS REFORM - What price preventable harm: social policies designed to

disregard human need?


Here's a history of the introduction of the system that led to Work Capability Assessments, Benefits Sanctions and so much else along those lines... I have posted here a section, the introduction, to *peak your interest, dear reader. 


*(A dear reader pointed out my spelling error, I used the incorrect word. I ought to have used 'pique' - thank you Bernie Hastie on Facebook...) 


I offer this in the hope you will read the paper. I'm afraid it will infuriate and inform in equal measure. Knowledge is powerful, because understanding the evidence makes for better decision making, and also assists in firming resistance to ill-informed policy.


This is critically important information and all to often left out of even the liberal press in their ruminations on this subject of 'benefits reforms'. 


To tell the truth so that the population can understand what is being done matters. 


Reading Mo Stewart's Paper will, I believe,  inform and infuriate in equal measure. I know. I have just repeated myself.


It is shameful the 'news media' refuse this rather straight forward task so often. 


https://citizen-network.org/uploads/attachment/746/what-price-preventable-harm.pdf


Mo Stewart

The Centre for Welfare Reform, England

Abstract


"Historically, the UK welfare system was designed to protect those in greatest need, which provided the necessary financial and psychological security for the unemployed and especially for the chronically ill and disabled community who are unfit to work. 


This paper identifies how social policy reforms based on fiscal priorities have had the opposite effect, creating a crisis for disability benefit claimants. Conducted over a period of ten years, the Preventable Harm Project demonstrates the negative impact of the adoption of American social and labour market policies, and the often fatal human consequences of the removal of medical opinion from disability benefit assessments. 


I argue that the adoption of the Work Capability Assessment for the restriction of disability benefit(s) has created preventable harm for those in greatest need, and this article identifies the negative influences impacting on UK social policy reforms to the detriment of the chronically ill and disabled community.


Key words: preventable harm, work capability assessment


Introduction


The past financial and psychological security provided by state financial support for the long-term chronically ill and disabled community was destined to end with the adoption of neoliberal politics, which is an ideology that supports free market competition with an emphasis on minimal state intervention in all aspects of social affairs. 


Neoliberal ideology has swept the globe and has impacted on all countries in the Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who are influential in the social policy reforms of all OECD member countries (OECD, 2003; Soldatic & Grover, 2012; Stafford et al, 2019). Margaret Thatcher was the first elected neoliberal politician in the UK and in 1982, during her first term in office as Prime Minister, Thatcher identified her political ambition to remove the UK’s welfare support system, including the National Health Service (NHS), in favour of the adoption of the American welfare system using private health insurance (Travis, 2016).


Every successive neoliberal government since Thatcher adopted social policy reforms to work towards this political ambition. In doing so, the past psychological security provided by the UK welfare state was removed, and every effort was made to ensure that access to state financial support would be made as difficult as possible when moving from a welfare state to a market state. 


Commonly known as ‘welfare reforms’ the combination of social policy reforms, together with the adoption of increasingly punitive conditionality using financial sanctions (Dwyer, 2018), increased the prevalence of psychological distress identified within the disabled community (Patrick, 2012). The Preventable Harm Project (the Project) was created to offer a critical reflection of published research papers and key policy documents in this area of social policy reforms.


Preventable harm: the creation of a social policy crisis


The Project identified the adoption of a ‘non-medical’ functional assessment model, known as the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), which disregards medical opinion when used to assess claimants of disability benefit (Stewart, 2018) . 


The WCA was introduced in 2008 to restrict access to the new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) disability benefit, by tightening the benefit gateway in order to reduce the costs of the social policy budget (DWP, 2006); as recommended by government commissioned research (Waddell & Aylward, 2005) which was funded by the American corporate sponsors UnumProvident Insurance (Cover, 2004).


Introduced on an exclusive fiscal basis, with a dangerous disregard for health and wellbeing (Barr et al, 2016), this flawed method of assessment guaranteed that disability benefit claimants would learn to live in fear of the WCA (Garthwaite, 2014), which became a matter of life or death for many of those in greatest need. 


The use of harsh sanctions by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for often minor misdemeanors associated with the WCA is linked to a disturbing number of chronically ill and disabled benefit claimants attempting suicide (Mills, 2017; Barr et al 2016), and others have starved to death in C21st UK when they were sanctioned with all benefit income removed, identified as being ‘killed by the state’ (Elward, 2016: 30)."


~


https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/58235/1/1351_Shakespeare.pdf - a more detailed paper on the Waddell & Aylward, 2005 model. The devastation that the implementation of the BPS model as interpreted by Waddel and Aylward is an immense unspeakable horror story. Millions of lives have been adversely impacted, just to 'save a few bob'...


~


In essence the voices of the vulnerable, their interior sense of what they are going through, are key to designing healthy policy. Always ask the locals, they know their territory really well. 


Meeting the unmet needs of the vulnerable (we are all vulnerable) is an essential element of healthy policy, in as much healthy policy seeks always to avoid avoidable harms


I think it is not so much to ask for, when we consider Governance of our society. The improved outcomes for all of us are what I describe as the profit of healthy policy. Rather than wealth extracted from privatisation of health care, we ought to mandate the profit as being the outcomes for the whole population. 


Clean water is the profit denied when water utilities refuse to invest, and their negligence leads to raw sewage being free, from the rivers to the sea, as CEOs take their bonus's and the shareholders celebrate with glee.





Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Mass Murder by Economic Violence aka 'Austerity' - the Legacy of Conservatives, Lib Dems and Blairite Labour.

It is not 'trickle down economics', it is economic violence.

'Austerity' is mass murder by deliberate withdrawal of support for vulnerable populations.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23020397.tory-austerity-likely-caused-deaths-covid-academic-says/



The report said there was now a “clear and urgent need ... for such harmful policies to be reversed”, with the authors urging the UK Government to “implement measures to protect the most vulnerable in society”.

These policies, promoted on the back of lies and gaslighting, were intentional actions that the Government of the time was warned against, and they went ahead, fully aware of the likely consequences.

"The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, noted there were 334,327 excess deaths over the expected number in England, Wales and Scotland over the period. This included 237,855 excess deaths among males in England and Wales, with a further 12,735 excess deaths recorded among men in Scotland.

Among women, there were 77,173 excess deaths in England and Wales, and 6564 in Scotland. The research was carried out amid “a stalling of improvement overall” in mortality rates, with increasing death rates among the poorest having been observed across the UK since the early 2010s.

Statistical analysis showed previously improving mortality trends had changed around the period 2011-13 in both Scotland and England, with this occurring following the Tories’ election victory in 2010."

This is Murder by Economic Violence, nothing less.

The United Nations has issued two reports in which they asserted that these policies amounted to a breach of the Human Rights of vulnerable people across the UK.

The Labour Files prove, in quite clear evidence, that the Centrist Blairite Brigade, now led by Sir Keir Starmer were in spite of the evidence focussed upon actively opposing, undermining and slandering Jeremy Corbyn, Momentum, the Disabled, The Vulnerable, the Unemployed, the Working Poor and Labour's own BAME members and staff from within the Labour Party, using illegal and amoral tactics - rather than pushing hard against these policies, showing a united socialist, humane front that had depth and energy, by joining in the work Corbyn and Momentum and Human Rights groups were and still are engaged in - this is a total betrayal of trust and of all the vulnerable people across the UK, on behalf of the Ruling Oligarchy, the Fossil Fuel Industry and the Military Industrial Complex of the UK.

The Labour Files, and why it matters.

The Labour Files provide plenty of solid evidence of persistent campaigns, nationally and locally, from the very moment Jeremy Corbyn accepted the leadership position, campaigns that included outright lies fabricated to suppress Socialists, false allegations, court cases driven by abusive spouses, Racist and Misogynistic abuse, email hacking, and the weaponisation of Anti-Semitism to undermine Corbyn, and more.

https://www.medialens.org/2022/mass-media-omerta-burying-al-jazeeras-the-labour-files/

"The damaging revelations about the Labour Party in the recent four-part Al Jazeera series, ‘The Labour Files’, and the almost totalitarian silence in response by British news media, should ram home the illusory nature of ‘democracy’ in the UK.

Based on the largest leak in British political history, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has exposed how Labour party officials smeared and intimidated rivals on the left of the party. The leaked data comprises 500 gigabytes of documents, emails, video and audio files from the Labour Party, dating from 1998 to 2021. They reveal:

  • The weaponisation of antisemitism by the right-wing of the Labour Party to hinder Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of becoming Prime Minister.
  • A ‘hierarchy of racism’ within the Labour Party disciplinary process which prioritises the investigation of alleged antisemitism cases over other forms of racism.
  • Shocking examples of Islamophobia and anti-Black racism within Labour.
  • The crushing of dissent within Labour under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership."


How utterly ugly has the Party formed to represent and protect the interests Workers become since Blairs wars, and the refusal of Labour Party to countenance War Crimes Investigations?

That warlike group within the Labour Party share culpability for these horrific deaths - be it in illegal and amoral psychological warfare against it's own members, or the economic violence of dying by poverty, cold, exacerbated disease, chronic poverty, chronic distress, abandonment and COVID are all utterly awful, awful ways to pass from this life. These are not the peaceful deaths most of would hope for.

The Weapons sent into multiple war zones lead to more violent deaths, always.... and as I have held, ever since the Iraq War, Labour and Parliament remain War Criminal entities, unindicted. Now they are mass murderers of their own constituents.

Labour and Conservative and Unionists and Lib Dems are all soiled by this vast culling, 580,000 awful deaths in the past 12 years, in pursuit of 'growing the economy'.

What then must we do to protect our own people from such harms?

What rights to action do we have?

Do not look to the Labour Party that is adopting a Vaticanesque silence on the false anti-Semitism charges aimed at Corbyn and the entire Socialist peace mongering Left now fully revealed, beyond any possibility of denial or open admission.

Al Jazeera’s ‘The Labour Files’ is a must-watch series. For the state-corporate media, for Labour Executive, for anti-Socialists and for the UK Ruling Class it is a ‘must-ignore’, 'not not mention the war' series.

All four episodes are available on YouTube:

Part 1: The Purge

Part 2: The Crisis

Part 3: The Hierarchy

Part 4: The Spying Game

We, the good and decent people of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland need a new political solidarity that takes on these bullies and gains a majority of seats in the Legislatures, at the ballot box. We have won the argument already.




Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received

https://www.reverbnation.com/corneilius - .mp3 songs

https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous - .wav Songs

https://www.corneilius.net - Archive

#folkmusic
#singersongwriter
#blogger
#music

Enough, Already! Taking sides in inter-State violence is dysfunctional. (HIroshima edit)


around 8am, 6th August.

this:




peace requires a basis in experience, and "Peace is more than the abscence of war."

Peace is not an abstract, nor is it relative.

Peace is the fundamental state of a loving human community, living as biologically healthy creatures, as part of the biosphere, the livingness of and on Earth, without ever being bullied, or ever becoming bullies, in any shape or form, from cradle to grave.

Peace is simple, and leads to complex diversity across a planet as varied as this. (there are no comparables, of course, it's just a turn of phrase.)

So.

Let's have some honesty here, before it all goes silly.

The dynamic known as competing militarised powers is a human, social, societal ecological pathology. 

The institutionalisation of what amounts to lethal bullying has be to be seen for what it really is. Lethal bullying. Inappropriate behaviour. Harm causing behaviour. A social disease.

Taking sides within that dynamic, absent any formal recognition, let alone a diagnosis, of that state of pathology, merely perpetuates the dynamic.  Having diagnosed the situation, taking sides becomes redundant.

Such people - the side takers - cannot ever bring peace or resolve the situation because by taking sides they perpetuate that struggle.

"One cannot solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it."
A. Einstein.

It is a matter of logic. 

It's a priori stuff.

Taking sides in an environment of organised violence is insane.

That said, in the existing situation, that's a choice deliberately removed from millions of men world wide. they stand armed, and ready to follow orders.

It's not healthy.

Part of my approach is to address the question - what is healthy human behaviour?

To focus not on the brutality to resist it, rather to focus on the health dynamic, to quell that brutality, to ease it's insecurity, to heal the situation, long term.

Long term means delayed gratification, it means thinking of generations of diverse people yet to be born in terms of what we will leave for them to deal with. It means humility - that is the acceptance of the wonder of biological life as a philosophical realisation that is also experiential,  and this sensitivity enables access therefore to the riches of the biological habitat, the wonder that is 'aboriginal land lore'.. it means doing your bit now, and surrendering the future to the continuation of adults doing their bit.

These ancients were masters at healthy human living. They were happy people. Until conquest.

This culture is a pup of a thing, a runt.

Immature, narccisitic, self serving and prone to bullying.

Self harming.

Cease taking sides, and start confronting the truth of the situation. 

All of it, all sides, and as we examine each, pick apart the truth and the lies, based on the evidence.

The existing system of competing militarised powers is unhealthy, it is harm causing on a massive scale. It is not a welfare system, and is barely social.

The evidence is in, and it is well understood, and the adverse outcomes, the harms are clear to all.

It amounts to institutionalised bullying.

Call it out for what it is, do not be terrified of it.

Name the behaviour.

Name it. Calmly, technically, clearly, without ad hominem, evidence based. Information.

.. if only because the system of competing militarised continues to be perpetuated by lies and accepted myth.

this is about us growing up, rather than rising up, let us do!